Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Solyndra - A major scandal for Obama?

Ed Morrisey thinks that the failed Solyndra solar power company could become a major scandal for the Obama administration:

The Obama administration chose Solyndra as its poster child for this effort. The White House fast-tracked approval for taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. The company received $535 million from the Treasury's Federal Financing Bank to build a new manufacturing facility. Obama himself appeared at Solyndra touting his green-jobs initiative, while Solyndra insisted as late as this summer that their financial status was strong.Suddenly, though, Solyndra collapsed, seemingly without warning. Its employees — more than a thousand of them — showed up to work on the last day of August to discover that the company had shut its doors. And just as suddenly, we began to find out that the collapse was not unforeseen after all. Despite the assurances of Solyndra executives to members of Congress, the company's stock price had fallen drastically over the past two years as questions arose about Solyndra's competitiveness and financial strength. And its taxpayer-backed expansion didn't create many new jobs, as Congress noticed in February.

Here it gets interesting:

Solyndra has connections all the way to Obama himself. When Solyndra initially applied for taxpayer subsidies, auditors at the Department of Energy questioned Solyndra's stability. So why did the Obama administration fast-track Solyndra's application? One reason might be that one of the chief investors in Solyndra is George Kaiser — who also was one of Obama's campaign bundlers in 2008, raising more than $50,000. Solyndra executives made more than 20 visits to the White House between March 2009 and April 2011. Was it a coincidence that Solyndra ended up with an interest rate from the feds at one-fourth the going rate for green-jobs projects?